Comments on MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet #1

Ed — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:38 GMT

http://www.convea.com
http://www.silverorange.com
http://www.officezilla.com

Andrew Otwell — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:09 GMT

>I’ll answer Lyle’s question by re-iterating that taxonomies
>simply do not work. Period. They are fundamentally flawed
>because they ultimately rely on a subjective (human)
>interpretation of which category/ies (from the taxonomy)
>to use. The more complex the taxonomy the greater the
>degree of confusion.

Of course, taxonomies have helped to solve information organization and retrieval problems for hundreds of years. We might not have developed approaches to quickly and accurately apply them to intranets yet, but there’s certainly nothing special about intranet information that makes it inappropriate to classify with taxonomies.

As to the “problem” of human subjectivity, forget it. You think that just because you’re using (for example) an automated classification tool that you’ve eliminated or even reduced it? You’re simply moving the responsibility for decisions from the human information classifier to the equally human programmer.

As to the one time and under budget claim, well, I need you as a project manager! Unfortunately I’ve never seen an intranet, under budget or not, which was useful or usable. Never. I bet the MS Intranet is still a god-awful hard thing to use, despite improvements made by the techniques in the article.

Miles Reid — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:09 GMT

In defense of Webauk a bit, I would say that Taxonomies do not work…ALONE. If you merely approached the problem by pushing a taxonomy the company would look at you and say, “ya and what do I do with it?” The difference in our approach was to apply other tools, we gave built back end management tools, integrated the information into usable UI for search and browse. We made taxonomies understandable. It took a triumvirate of skills to enable the solutions to work. Good development, to make the platform stable, while allowing flexibility. Good management of the taxonomies so that they are relevant and useful, and usable designs (UI) that exposes the information and conveys the content to the user so that the knowledge can be extracted.

Lyle Kantrovich — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:37 GMT

Webauk, all I was trying to say is that there are many reasons why a taxonomy implementation may fail – no need to catalog them all here. I wasn’t trying to insult your team. I’ve worked on a number or products/sites that’ve failed in the long run—and I’ve learned along the way. Oh and I’ve had many successful ones too…

I wasn’t attacking you, but merely pointing out that you say taxonomies don’t work, and then don’t backup your claim or offer anything better as a solution. The whole point of the MSWeb piece is to outline a case study where TAXONOMIES DID WORK. You might want to go back and re-read that first before panning the whole idea. I’ve worked on taxonomy implementations on a large intranet and can say it has helped some users some of the time—it’s not been a silver bullet. Our implementation isn’t perfect by any measure, but it was an improvement over what we had. As far as “tearing down” an intranet – you clearly don’t understand what that means in a large corporate setting—intranets can be hundreds or thousands of *sites*—starting over is out of the question. Day to day business and budgets won’t allow for it even if you could manage the sheer scope of it.

On-time and on-budget have nothing to do with users or usability. So there. :-)

mike crandall — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Weighing in a little late on this, but hopefully with some additional information that might help in thinking about this very difficult problem. The question is not really about taxonomies, but how taxonomies are used. What Microsoft did very well was to embed taxonomies into a set of service offerings that have become part of the intranet. They did so by dedicating technical, intellectual, and political resources to the problem, and making sure that those resources were targeted at the needs of the users and stakeholders in the organization.

They also went after low-hanging fruit, by integrating the taxonomy with their intranet search engine, and using it to consistently expose the right answers to the most common queries being asked- the results were high user satisfaction, and definitive proof that the approach was working. This was the key to getting others to realize the advantage of the services, and begin to use them, which of course gets buy-in and longer term support for the initiative.

Discussion of taxonomies too often focuses on the taxonomies themselves, not on the ultimate purpose for their creation. By staying aware of what they were trying to accomplish with the taxonomy, and making it the means rather than the end, Microsoft was able to accomplish a great deal in a very short period of time.

A side note about the right or wrong way to build an intranet- whether a centralized or decentralized approach is taken, it’s very likely that there will be a decentralized intranet behind the scenes, since it’s so easy to build (not maintain!!!). It’s a natural extension of the old water cooler/hallway conversation, and pretty difficult to prevent. Given that reality, approaches like Microsoft’s are a good way to skim the best of that back-channel conduit and bring it into the “official” channel- use both for what they are best at, and integrate them at the point of use. It’s what knowledge management is all about- integrating tacit and explicit knowledge to build a base for creation of new knowledge.

Thomas Vander Wal — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Webauk, I am happy you were on-time and under budget, but that is not a great measure of success. Use and findability of information is a major need for an Intranet. Measuring these elements and finding vast improvement in these areas would be something worth boasting.

Taxonomies are a strong method for adding to positive experiences, on which many an Intranet’s experience is based on users finding information to get their job done (among many other information sharing tasks). Finding folks that can build a taxonomy properly or adequately is not easy, but it is getting easier as more folks are getting trained. Your customers and the users of the Intranet may thank you more than money back up front. The money saved in the long run is in the lack of lost time trying to find information or better yet having the information needed within easy grasp. Lost time is the killer in any organization and the Intranet where information is easily findable is a great way to cut the missing information money pit that eats profit and resources.

Taxonomies may not be the perfect answer to every situation, but ruling out a great resource from a developer’s toolbelt on one poor implementation or mis-matched solution hurts the clients who depend on us to provide them helpful solutions. Learning why many find great success with including taxonomies in thier solution sets may be very helpful. It could be worth giving taxonomies a second chance as well as chosing other metrics of success.

—Just trying to help.

Alex Wade — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

To clarify one aspect of this: navigational (or category) taxonomies are only one of the types of taxonomies that are used in improving infomation retrieval Microsoft. Many directories (such as Yahoo) rely on this approach exlusively. The larger of the taxonomies used by Microsoft on both the Intranet and Internet sites take a more thesaural approach to map concepts together.

Is there subjectivity? Of course. But there are also measurable results that show that the cumulative value of these approaches has had a positive effect. Your mileage may vary. Our mileage has been pretty good.

—-Alex

Suzanne — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

I agree that the “sticky plaster” approach, i.e. putting a taxonomy/searchengine/portal on top of an unorganised and chaotic information store is not the answer.
However, I believe that implementing a taxonomy across the information architecture of the content management system, the portal, and the refinement of the search engine results will provide consistency and organisation to the information and address the overload problem in an organisation by providing context and filtering capabilities.
The key to a successful taxonomy is that it be dynamic and flexible.
Anyone who truly wants to solve information overload shouldn’t expect a quick fix and the investment in a taxonomy will be worth it. This has been proven by over 50 years of information science research.

webauk — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Thanks to Lyle for rant and attack. I read a 3,000 word article (approx) then respond. You flame me after only reading my six sentences. Such is life I guess.

I’ll answer Lyle’s question by re-iterating that taxonomies simply do not work. Period. They are fundamentally flawed because they ultimately rely on a subjective (human) interpretation of which category/ies (from the taxonomy) to use. The more complex the taxonomy the greater the degree of confusion. MSWebs three huge taxonomies are simply a grotesque example of this.

I’ll go further and say that it is not possible to fix a broken intranet. If it has already descended into an internet-like anarachy then it is too late. The solution sounds painful and time-consuming – tear
it down and rebuild it.

Naturaly the suppliers of packages/consultancy advertised as “making your (broken) intranet work” (and their drones) will not agree with me.

As for Lyle’s little dig at my team’s inaility to execute a plan properly? In the last five years I’ve designed, implemented and managed three large corporate intranets. All delivered on-time and under-budget. So there :-)

Webauk (Contentious? Moi?)

James Robertson — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

While this is an interesting approach, I would also question whether providing a search engine on over a million pages, and 8000 separate intranets is really a solution.

Surely the issue is information overload, not necessarily difficulties in finding information. And what of the quality, accuracy and relevance of all these pages?

I would expect that a thorough review of the content (no small task, of course) would end up deleting 75% of the pages…

Anyway, all good food for thought.

dkr — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:37 GMT

Yikes. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get the 2nd edition, but I think I have to now.

It’s encouraging to know that some of the problems I’ve encountered here in my little world are reflected in the big boys backyards also. There was some good stuff in there – hope the rest is as enlightening.

Scott Baldwin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Wow. Super informative.

Often projects of such scope are sinking in information. You provided a compelling case study for a large project in a broad organization. I appreciate the fact that you went into such detail about the steps that the team went through to come up with a final, workable solution.

Thanks L&P.

p.s. a copy of the 2nd edition is now on order.

Louis Rosenfeld — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Umm… Yow.

I might also add that you’ve only read an excerpt of a much longer chapter (more of which will run right here in B&A). Maybe read the whole thing; *then* you’ll have even more fuel to flame us with. ;-)

Lyle Kantrovich — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:37 GMT

So Webauk, your supposedly better answer for how TO run or fix a broken intranet would be what exactly?...

Maybe your team/company just couldn’t execute the plan properly?

Taxonomies aren’t trivial (or sexy). People should not tread lightly down that road. Do all sites or companies need a taxonomy? Likely not, but many could greatly benefit from one that’s well executed and maintained.

Saying taxonomies never accurately reflect content is like saying Knowledge Management systems never accurately reflect what’s in peoples’ heads. It’s not about perfection, but delivering SOMETHING THAT’S BETTER THAN TODAY, HAS BENEFITS, and VALUE.

Sum of all critics:
Taxonomies don’t work
+ Search is broken
+ Flash is 99% bad
+ Banner ad blindness
+ People don’t read online
+ Dot coms will fail
+ Global warming
+ Asteroids will hit the earth
+ Eating at Fast Food restaurants will make you fat
————————————————————————————————
Total: Give in, curl up and die.

The best we can do is to identify “best practices” and give them a whack. Your mileage may vary.

Lou & Peter: Great info—thanks!

webauk — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:27:08 GMT

Amazing article. It should be a lesson to everyone on how NOT to run an intranet.

It should also be a lesson in how NOT to make a broken intranet work. Relying on multiple taxonomies and meta-schema is a huge undertaking and simply won’t work. We looked at taxonomies for our intranet about five years ago. Later we realised that they will never accurately reflect content.

Trying to get a search engine (or portal) to make an intranet work will always just replicate the you have problems of finding information on the internet.

Webauk